Pet peeves: Why men irritate women
Sometimes, men irritate the hell out of women, and honestly they know it but they just act like they don’t. Growing up, I remember teasing the girl I liked the most in school only to get her to notice me. So perhaps the irritating streak has continued to be part of our DNA as we’ve grown up. Having been married for sometime, I’ve been able to pin point a few areas where the male species has mastered the art of irritation. 1. Toilet seat conundrum We don’t know why we do this, but we do. No matter how many times you tell us to ...
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Who you calling crazy?
Imagine being paralysed to a point that living your day to day life becomes a constant struggle and challenge. Imagine that a simple task that you do on any given day becomes an obstacle and causes great anxiety. No, I am not referring to being physically paralysed or having a physical impairment but rather the crippling impact of dealing with serious mental health problems. I find it difficult to speak so openly about this issue as someone very dear to me has been struggling with bipolar disorder and a severe form of anxiety since I was relatively young. This someone happens ...
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My sister didn’t visit the Punjab Institute of Cardiology
I visited Pakistan this winter to spend my holidays with my family. After spending some lovely days with my parents at my dad’s farmhouse in the cool country side of Sargodha – the world’s best citrus fruit producing area – and returned to Rawalpindi for some work. While driving along the way, I received a phone call from my sister. She told me she had an intestinal gas problem, which had resulted in low blood pressure and had caused her to faint. By the time she called me, thankfully, she was feeling better. ‘Intestinal gas’ is the ultimate diagnosis in our ...
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Living with multiple sclerosis
I suffer from multiple sclerosis. I also suffer from a cocktail of other ailments that such abbreviations bring. However you never know what or which. You spend endless hours every week with new symptoms that could fit into other definitions. There is a concoction of medications and an assortment of supplements that promise good health, but is there ever hope? Never. Hope is about knowing that the disease will go away. Hope is for the foolish. Here, there is fighting; there is preparedness; and there is perseverance. I must live as the capacitor that can store every iota of strength for my ...
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Is my blood not good enough for you?
I was casually walking in the Ibn Batuta Mall with a friend when I saw the Dubai Blood Donation Centre kiosk. The moment I saw it, I decided that I had to donate blood. A couple of girls sat behind the desk with hundreds of forms, while other volunteers walked around asking people to donate blood. My friend had to look after his daughter, so he decided to wait and watch while I went to donate blood. I walked towards the desk where the females were sitting. They were busy with other donors asking different questions and filling out the forms as I ...
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Battling polio: If only our children were vaccinated
Three-year-old Ahmad asked his mother, Razia why his foot looked different from his 5-year-old brother Sadiq. His mother said: “God made you this way.” Ahmad, my maid’s cousin’s son probably wondered who God was and if he could ask Him to change his foot so that he could at least walk on his own, if not play with Sadiq. Later, Razia asked her husband to try and get help from the shehar wala doctors. Their family saved for two months to come to Peshawar from the small district of Torghar, where they met with a local doctor. Ahmad was diagnosed with a ...
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Would you marry an epileptic girl?
When I was younger, a pretty girl named Sarah* used to live in my neighborhood. I would often notice her on my way to school. Sarah was like any other girl, but a little quiet. I did not know much about her. Then, a few years back, her family moved away from our neighborhood. A few days before they left, the girl’s sister came to my house to meet my mother. She told my mother that her brother, an educated web developer, was not allowing Sarah to get married because she suffered from epilepsy. Her brother thought that after marriage, her husband and in-laws ...
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Are disease and death punishments from God?
A common idea prevalent in Pakistan is that disease and death, especially if they are severe, debilitating and disfiguring, have to be punishments from God, for acts done in the past. The fact that this idea is common among those who do not have knowledge of the sciences is not surprising, since they have grown up with superstitions. However, hearing the same rant from a medical student or a science student is not only disturbing but also depressing, since a medical student knows that most illnesses have known causes. These perceptions are more common when diseases that are sexually transmitted are ...
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Boys should not die because of dog bites
To see your patient succumb to his last few breaths, while you stand helplessly facing the family is indeed the most testing time for a physician, especially when the patient is a 10-year-old playful child who you have known personally. I recently had the tragic experience of dealing with such a situation. Helpless as we were, we could not reverse the symptoms of Rabies, a deadly virus which is contracted through a rabid animal contact (zoonotic disease). My 10-year-old patient was bitten by a rabid dog 25 days ago while walking home from school. The unprovoked attack is typical ...
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Sometimes ‘make-do’ health care is the best treatment
As medical students, we spend about half a year, out of the strenuous five of our degree, in primary care which caters to a specific fraction of the population. The primary care centre at the Aga Khan University Hospital serves people from rural Sindh and Balochistan, with plenty of patients trickling in from Afghanistan. They come to seek expert medical advice for conditions that do not go away spontaneously or after treatment by a local practitioner. The other patients are residents of Karachi mostly from poor backgrounds; they prefer primary care at a lower cost compared to specialty consultations ...
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